The Battle of Oklahoma took place yesterday -- a violent, brutal, and occasionally bloody battle for Oklahoma supremacy. It wasn't a battle of words or weapons. Instead, it was a battle that involved what matters most in Oklahoma: Football!
Yesterday was the annual clash between the
Oklahoma State University Cowboys and the
University of Oklahoma Sooners. As is usually the case, the game had national significance, as both teams came into the game ranked in the top ten, the Cowboys at number 3 and the Sooners at number 10. Also on the line were the Big 12 championship, bowl game opportunities, and, most importantly, Oklahoma bragging rights for an entire year for the winner.
Naturally, a game between two intra-state rivals and football powerhouses is guaranteed to be a hard-fought, close contest decided in the final seconds, right? Not this year. Breaking a string of eight consecutive losses in the
Bedlam Game, and clinching the
Big 12 Conference title for the first time in decades, were the Cowboys in a rout, as they manhandled the Sooners by a
final score of 44-10.
The big football question remains: Will OSU's huge victory vault them past the second-ranked
Alabama Crimson Tide and into the
BCS national championship game against top-ranked
Louisiana State University Tigers? Cowboys' coach Mike Gundy thinks they should:
I don’t think that there’s any question that Oklahoma State should play in the big game. People told me at the coffee shop that they were giving me a hard time about mentioning other schools last week. I want to clarify myself that Oklahoma State hadn’t earned the right to talk about a game past the conference championship game, because we hadn’t won a conference championship. Our staff, including myself, talked to our football team every day about winning a conference championship. After what they accomplished tonight and the way they did it against the No. 10 team in the country, I don’t think there’s any question they deserve an opportunity to play for it all.
At a minimum, the Cowboys will play in the
Fiesta Bowl, and the Sooners will certainly go to a top bowl game.
The Oklahoman has extensive online coverage of the game, including video highlights and pictures that you can seen after the jump.
Oklahoma State was edged out of the BCS national championship game by Alabama by a mere .0086 at the end of the regular season. Thus, despite having already lost once to number one Louisiana State University, number two Alabama will play LSU for the mythical national championship and OSU will play number four Stanford on January 2 in the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona.
And finally, in a match-up of an Oklahoma team against Elliot's own school, Tulsa will play BYU in the Armed Forces Bowl on December 30 in Dallas.